Ralph Ellison uses extreme ambiguity to his advantage in telling the complicated story of the invisible man, or how one becomes the invisible man. For one to become invisible, his or her foundation of identity is unusually loose.
Ellison's protagonist, being nameless from the beginning, neglects the influence a parent bears as the first characteristic they press upon their child after birth. Because Invisible Man solely follows the one character's internal growth as a bildungsroman, the reader has little information to find possible parental influence in the narrator. Except, possibly, from the lacking self-confidence of the invisible man that brings him to his predicament in the manhole at the end of his journey.
The only direct wording from a family member mentioned in Invisible Man comes from his grandfather, preaching a passive aggressive position toward the prejudice that haunts the narrator his entire life. One might assume that those words that stick with the invisible man had been the driving wisdom for the rest of his family, and the beliefs of his parents. If this is true, the invisible man doesn't diverge far from his paternal influence. Though he attempts to defy oppressive situations, for example giving his speech at Battle Royal for a small shot at recognition and better education, the narrator adheres to the innocence and passive nature his blood teaches him. This passable characteristic keeps him vulnerable to the identity that society thrusts upon him as an African American, whichever group he happens to be in at the time.
The invisible man has no roots, no identification, and that's the point. This is not a book that can give me a conclusive answer to my question in the affirmative direction. However, I feel the narrator's omitted family history and childhood from the book emphasizes how lost one becomes without a strong parental foundation.
